January 9, 2009

Guests:

• Russell Means: Russell Means is an interesting guest for InfoWars. On the one hand, he has a decades long history of activism, engaging in occupations and protests against the mistreatment of Native Peoples in America. On the other hand, he is probably also a crazy person. For instance, he was ready to sign up as Vice President to campaign with Larry Flynt in 1983. For another, he was arrested for assault and battery of his 80 year-old father (who had one false arm), and in 1999 the American Indian Movement (AIM) put out a press release repudiating him and saying that, though he may represent himself as involved with AIM, he was not. As is so often the case on this show, it appears we are dealing with a con-man.
• Bob Chapman: Bob Chapman is an absolute mystery, and all I can tell you for certain about him is that there is something very sinister afoot in his life. For one thing, he claims that he was "probably the largest gold and silver stockbroker in the world" from 1970-1988, a claim that if true would have to make Bob at very least a multi-billionaire, which raises the question of why he would appear on InfoWars to shill gold at age 73 if he was a billionaire. It doesn't add up. But then, you peel back the next layer, and you learn that until 1976 he focused his gold business almost entirely on South African (apartheid era South African) gold, in fact he spent the years 1970-1973 living in apartheid era South Africa and the short-lived literal white nationalist state Rhodesia. He helped Gary Allen finance the printing of his book None Dare Call It Conspiracy (the book that "woke Alex Jones up") with money he was making from stealing South African resources and while he was living in apartheid countries in Africa. Also, one time, he claimed he saw a video of Ronald Reagan getting butt-fucked.
• Alan Watt: Alan Watt is not Alan Watts. Those are different guys, don't get them confused. Alan Watt is an idiot who mostly rambles about the NWO and Illuminati, spinning yarns about vague theories of their nefarious doings throughout history. It's all bullshit, and he's real boring.

Narratives:

There are a couple of very, very important things that come up on today's show, but before getting to them, Alex does give an update about how he is selling his broken bullhorn, lovingly nicknamed TyrannyCrusher One:

It turns out that Alex's eBay auction for his broken bullhorn fell prey to some troll bidding, and now he may not be able to sell it after all, what with the time it will take to go through the bids and see if any of them are real.

That seems like a job for eBay, and really shouldn't represent any time commitment on Alex's part, but whatever. The part I'm far more interested in is the part where Alex is convinced that anything negative that happens to him must be the government coming after him. The reality is that people on the internet like to fuck around and 2009 was basically the wild west for this sort of thing.

What Alex is doing is really smart though, painting a run of the mill internet prank as targeted harassment from government shills does make it appear that his work is far more dangerous and based in reality than it actually is. Propaganda truly is about the management of appearances, so it's important for even minor things like this to be presented as sinister attacks against "the republic," or some shit.

It is really stupid, but it does lead to this incredibly stupid attack on Alex's critics:

Regardless, on to the more important things on this episode. These are very important, so I will need to deal with them as bullet points:

1) Alex Jones Criticizes Israel For Shooting Palestinians

This is pretty huge, and is diametrically opposed to Alex's position in 2018. When Israeli snipers shot and killed over 50 Palestinians in May of 2018, most of them completely unarmed and peacefully demonstrating, Alex's response was to affirm his support of Israel, and to play rhetorical "what about this?" type games about how bad he thinks Muslims are, lying about "hourly suicide bombings" that the media doesn't report:

We can see here a major pivot in his position. This is something that demands an explanation, and I do not trust the one that Alex would offer up, namely that he "didn't realize how evil Islam was in 2009." Alex's rhetoric about the "Globalists" wanting to flood "Western" (he means "white") countries with immigrants in order to destroy their economies, is alive and well in 2009. This is one of the things he claims is his biggest issues with Islam, and it's a complaint he is making in 2009, so I reject that as what has changed for him.

It is hard to say without having all the evidence at our disposal, but this is going to be something that we watch very closely as 2009 progresses. As it stands, this is one of the most glaring examples of something that needs explaining that we've found in the past so far.

[Note: we in no way believe that this is an indication that Alex works for Israel or Mossad. The people who put forth those sorts of theories generally seem to hold to a particular belief system that we do not think is a coincidence. I don't rule out any possibility, but all "evidence" I've seen has been very weak, and there are many other possible explanations for why Alex changed his position on Israel]

2) Alex Is In Very Deep As A Gold Con-Man

For a long time, it's been perfectly clear that Alex is running a gold-sales scam at the behest of Ted Anderson, owner of the Genesis Communications Network and the gold/silver outlet Midas Resources.

How I imagined it, Alex is kind of crazy and paranoid to begin with, but he's in enough control of it to be able to use it to sell things. He probably does believe that the "Globalists" are putting things in the water, but he also knows that if he yells about it more and exaggerates the danger, he will sell more units for his water filtration sponsors. He probably is a Doomsday Prepper-type at heart, but if he amps up how passionate he seems about fearing that the end is coming, that translates to more sales for his survival food sponsor. I made the fairly generous assumption that the relationship between Alex's content and his sponsors was incidental or possibly benign.

After experiencing a bit of 2009 episodes, I no longer think InfoWars is a case of benign or incidental sales. I am becoming more and more convinced that we are not looking at a radio show where the host has positions, and conveniently he has sponsors related to the things he talks about. I am becoming concerned that the advertisements on InfoWars dictate the content.

On this episode, Alex Jones welcomes Bob Chapman to the show, and they very predictably have a conversation about how the economy and the dollar are about to collapse. They spread a ton of real over the top financial fear, before Bob reaches the natural conclusion of their conversation, telling the audience that the only safe option in the world is gold:

At this point, Bob Chapman straight up just tells Alex's audience that what they need to do is call Midas Resources. Keep in mind that Bob Chapman is appearing on the show, ostensibly, as a financial expert, not as a booster for Midas Resources, which again, is the company that owns GCN, the company that syndicates Alex's show (and is responsible for most of his ad revenue).

Leave aside for a second that Bob Chapman buys ads on GCN programming to promote his newsletter, The International Forecaster. Forget that Midas Resources offers a free issue of The International Forecaster along with gold/silver purchases. Actually, scratch that, there is no way to ignore these absurdly intertwined, overlapping, and undisclosed business relationships between these guys. This is absolutely the definition of immoral advertising.

This kind of thing should be a huge red flag for anyone listening, and it should be completely clear what is going on as soon as Alex gets Ted Anderson himself on the line to chat with Bob Chapman about how important it is to buy gold and how good the Midas deals are if you want to buy gold NOW!

These men are running a very basic con where Alex has someone on as an expert who is actually a shill for Midas Resources. The two of them get the audience ready to hear a gold salespitch, usually by peddling fear based on misrepresentations of news stories or history, and when the audience is good and primed, they bring in the closer, Ted Anderson to give you the deals, deals that you would be so stupid to pass up.

It doesn't get ore see-through than this as a con, and if they would be willing to stoop to this level, it really has to call into question all the rest of InfoWars operation. Very likely, the entire thing is probably not above board.